Pouring in… the end for me

For over 18 months I’ve been running the twitter account @pouringinmelb – which you can read about here – and from that it has spawned “pouring in” accounts in Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart and Dublin; as well as an Android app for Melbourne users.

However, I’ve decided to cease my involvement/activity on the account and the app developer has also decided to discontinue support and availability.

There is no big story here, or no dramatic reasons as to why we decided to stop; it however boils down to (for me at least) that I didn’t enjoy doing it anymore. It started as a way to highlight the better beers around the town, then it grew into highlighting all available taplists and then it grew into an app but I ended up resenting having to do the updates. Mostly because I’ve stopped “chasing” taps and I’m not too fussed about trying every new release or seasonal launch.

18 Months ago I was and my reasoning behind starting Pouring in Melbourne was that if I was doing the searching, why not share that information. But now I’m not doing the searching so come 4pm most afternoons when I was ready to go home and forget about my day I realised I would then have to dig through 30 or so social media accounts, websites and tap listings to pull out the highlights for no real personal reward (that sounds awful but whatever. I don’t think that makes me a bad person).

So my lack of enthusiasm was really hindering the updates and making me unhappy to be doing them.

I feel like I should say, I still think an aggregating social media account is the best way for tap info to be shared around – and the app we built was a reflection of that. I do think a combination of user-generated and venue generated updates is the only way to do what we set out to do.

I also should say I really enjoyed doing it for the most part and getting people responding, sharing updates, and making their beer decisions based on what I put up was neat. In addition getting venues to see the value of updating has been a benefit too. However… I didn’t get as many offers of free beer as I would have thought (but to be fair, I was always too embarrassed to take bars up on their offers anyway.)

It should be acknowledged that Now Tapped is having a lot of success and those guys have built an excellent system which I wish more venues used (or updated more frequently). I hope that they continue to grow – it is quite a different model and as I said I think a combination of venue and user updates is the best way to get accurate and up to date information. However their system and hard work has shown me that venues are far more willing to update than we ever thought, which is probably a testament to their design and user interface.

If anyone reading this wants to continue using the @pouringinmelb account to provide the service, than shoot me an email (luke at aleofatime.com) – I can’t guarantee I’ll sign it over (like, if you are from CUB or something) but I’d be more than happy to give it over to the right person/people.

Thanks to Ross for building the app, and Emma (http://emmabemrose.com/) for her excellent design work. It’s a shame that the awesome logo came so late in the piece. And thanks to everyone who helped spread the word about good beer by sending me updates etc.

I guess the final thing I should add is, it got so freaking hard to keep up with every new or interesting tap or venue and I think that’s an indication of how fast beer is growing. I’m not stopping all bummed out or full of resentment but rather happy with how easy it is to get an awesome beer.

Edit: I forgot to mention – I also have a parody account called “@carpetbaginmeb” which updates all the carpet bag steaks in Melbourne (that’s a steak stuffed with oysters). I’ll keep that running – there are only two in Melbourne anyway so updates are easy.